![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/0101.jpg\")
<\/a>Like all the tutorials say, I start a soap session by gathering all my materials.\u00a0 I have a shelf where I keep most of my fats and oils, lye and scents, along with my stick blender and scale.\u00a0 I also gather up all the stainless steel and glass bowls we have in the kitchen for measuring and holding ingredients. I do not have a long list of safety equipment–goggles, aprons, gloves, etc.\u00a0 I settle for sending the boys upstairs and putting the dogs outside—–everyone knows that young children and pets are the source for 99.99999% of accidents.\u00a0 Without children and pets, the safety industry would be screwed.\u00a0 I also set a bottle of white vinegar somewhere within reach because supposedly white vinegar can counteract a lye burn.<\/p>\nThe next thing I do is get out my crockpots.\u00a0 Now I used to make cold process soap.\u00a0 Because I was stupid.\u00a0 Cold process soap involves waiting for the soap to cure for 4 or 6 or 8 weeks.\u00a0 During those 4 or 6 or 8 weeks you have to have a place to let the soap sit around.\u00a0 And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any counters or shelves or racks that aren’t used on a daily basis or already full of other crap.\u00a0 Also, I never remember to make soap until I’ve already used up my last bar.\u00a0 So I’d have to buy soap from the store for a month while waiting for my soap to finish curing.\u00a0 Which is kind of like when I am milking twice a day but still buying milk from the store because we have bottle babies drinking it all.\u00a0 So I end up digging through the bathroom shelves, hoping for a hidden bar of soap that fell behind the first aid kit, and muttering the f word.\u00a0 You know—-frustrating.<\/p>\n
Oh, wait.\u00a0 You weren’t wondering where I got the turkey from.\u00a0 You were wondering about the mayo and french onion soup thing.\u00a0 Well, I have a recipe that involves rubbing a turkey breast with french onion soup mix before roasting it.\u00a0 And there’s an old school tip that covering a turkey with mayo before roasting it keeps it from drying out without affecting the taste.\u00a0 I just combined the two ideas.\u00a0 I mean, how can you go wrong with mayo and french onion soup mix?\u00a0 You can’t.\u00a0 It was delicious.\u00a0 Especially served with fried zucchini from the garden and the last of the sweet corn from the farmers market.\u00a0 And the leftovers are going to make excellent paninis with provolone and Italian bread after church.<\/p>\n Jeez.\u00a0 What the heck were we talking about here?\u00a0 Oh, yeah….soap.<\/p>\n After setting up your equipment, you have the fun part of choosing your recipes.\u00a0 I have a folder of recipes that I like to use, although it can be annoying to try and match up the recipes with the ingredients I actually have on hand.\u00a0 I don’t keep a lot of fancy oils or butters so if it calls for something like apricot kernel oil, then I’m out of luck.\u00a0 Or I just substitute that ingredient for something that I do have.\u00a0 Just be sure to use a lye calculator like SoapCalc<\/a> if you substitute ingredients.\u00a0 If you don’t, something terrible could happen.\u00a0 I don’t know what because I substitute ingredients all the time without using SoapCalc.\u00a0 Even though every tutorial or recipe warns me not to.\u00a0 I don’t mean to be that kind of irresponsible soapmaker.\u00a0 It’s just that the first time I opened SoapCalc, I realized that in order to use a lye calculator I had to know and understand terms like SAP (KOH SAP), fatty acid profile, iodine value, super fat % and INS.\u00a0 Of those words, super fat was the only one that had any meaning to me.\u00a0 For obvious reasons.\u00a0 Plus, I thought INS had something to do with a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and racial profiling in California.\u00a0 In any case, using the crackpot method, you just use the ingredients you have and keep that bottle of white vinegar close by.\u00a0 If something terrible ever does happen, I’ll let you know.\u00a0 At least it will be good for a blog post.\u00a0 Or a new kitchen after the first one burns down in a soapmaking explosion.\u00a0 Whichever.<\/p>\n Now I simply measured my ingredients.\u00a0 There’s an excellent lesson here for kids.\u00a0 It turns out that not all of elementary school was wasted—it is<\/em> actually helpful to know the difference between volume and weight.\u00a0 At least during soap making.\u00a0 I can’t say I’ve used it at any other time in my life.\u00a0 Mostly because I don’t have a profitable, high paying job in the science industry like, for example, making cancer drugs.\u00a0 Or making methamphetamines.\u00a0 Which just goes to show that science is useful at both ends of society.<\/p>\n Please note that in the interest of creating an error-free and grammatically correct blog, I just got myself bookmarked by a government watchdog because I googled “methamphetamines.”\u00a0 Uncle Sam, in case you’re wondering, I was just trying to figure out how to spell it.\u00a0 Because WordPress keeps telling me that “methamphetamines” is incorrect and the internet seems to suggest that the plural of “methamphetamine” is “methamphetamine.”\u00a0 How can this be true?\u00a0 Shouldn’t it at least be “methampheti”?\u00a0 Or is this a “deer” and “deer” issue?\u00a0 Some sites even say there is no such thing as a plural of methamphetamine because it is a specific class of drug included in a class of drugs blah blah blahbitty blah.\u00a0 Oh NO!\u00a0 You just googled it and got bookmarked, too!\u00a0 I was going to tell you where you can buy lye online because hardware stores stopped selling it due to illegal drug manufacture, but I think we’d better stop while we’re ahead.\u00a0 You probably get a big red flag if you google “methampethamine” and “where to purchase lye” on the same day.\u00a0 I’m just sayin’.<\/p>\n Anyhoo.<\/p>\n Bottom line is that you should check the recipe carefully and weigh or measure accordingly.\u00a0 Also, keep a spare set of batteries for your kitchen scale or you’ll be halfway through your crackpot soapmaking when the scale dies.\u00a0 And then you’ll find out it takes those darn watch batteries.\u00a0 And you’ll have to rush to Radio Shack for more batteries before your lye and oil mixtures are at different temperatures and you think that maybe by the time you include the expense of gas and mileage into your soapmaking, it would be cheaper to buy soap at a craft fair.\u00a0 Just another part of the conspiracy….<\/p>\n The lye mixture was made by carefully adding the lye to the water or milk.\u00a0 I added it together in the house, then carried it outside to stir it.\u00a0 The chemical reaction of lye and water lets off noxious fumes and lots of heat so as soon as the lye was dissolved, I just set it outside to cool and left it.\u00a0 Of course, I had to set it out on top of a metal shelving unit where the chickens, ducks, guineas, sheep, or barn cat couldn’t reach it or spill it.\u00a0 You would think that noxious fumes and extreme heat would keep critters from taking a drink out of it.\u00a0 If you think that, then you don’t have chickens, ducks, guineas, sheep, or a barn cat.\u00a0 Plus, you forgot what I told you about children, pets, and the safety industry.<\/p>\n Now back in the days of cold process soapmaking, I used to measure the temperature of the oils and lye mixture.\u00a0 When they got to 95 degrees, or 110 degrees, or whatever the recipe specified, then I combined them.\u00a0 Until some other soapmaker posted online that as long as the 2 different mixtures were close to the same temperature, you could go ahead and combine them safely.\u00a0 No thermometers needed.\u00a0 What??!!!\u00a0 Why would the recipe even include temperatures if this was the case???\u00a0 Why do some soapmakers insist on making this process so much more complicated than necessary???\u00a0 Are they part of some secret society or coven or something?\u00a0 Jeez, ladies, lighten up!\u00a0 Imagine how much more time you could spend soaking in the tub, enjoying the scent of your raspberry vanilla soap, if you didn’t have to try and get the lye mixture and the oils mixture to exactly 95 degrees at exactly the same time.\u00a0 Isn’t it enough that everyone wants the roast turkey and the sweet potato casserole to be hot at the same time, even though you only have one oven, every Thanksgiving??!!!\u00a0 Fight the power!<\/p>\n So, of course, guesstimating the temperatures is exactly the way I do it now.\u00a0 I feel the bottom of the bowl with the lye mixture to get an idea of how hot it is.\u00a0 I dip a finger in the oil mixture to get an idea of how hot it is.\u00a0 If they feel close, then I go ahead and add the lye mixture to the oil mixture.\u00a0 Which now that I think about it is exactly how I figure out if the replacement water for the fishtank is close to the water temperature that they already have.\u00a0 And I haven’t killed the fish yet.\u00a0 Well, there was that one time a fish died.\u00a0 But it had more to do with him throwing himself out of the fish net and onto the floor for a few seconds than with the water temperature.\u00a0 I think.<\/p>\n But underneath the label it looked like this:<\/p>\n How dare you, Superbrand?!\u00a0 I’m pretty sure those indents are to decrease the amount of cheese actually in the package while the wrapper makes me think it’s the same amount as usual.\u00a0 What, am I expected to read the weight on food labels now??!!\u00a0 As if grocery shopping isn’t a horrific enough experience already—what with the cookies that I don’t need being in the same aisle with the crackers that I have to have for my goat cheese.\u00a0 Now you not only cheat me out of Parmesan cheese, you ruin my soap!!\u00a0 Shame, shame, Superbrand.\u00a0 Oh, eventually Big cut the container apart with the box cutter and we salvaged the soap.\u00a0 It actually made some cute soap shapes in the end.\u00a0 But don’t think I’m over it, Superbrand.\u00a0 You’re dead to me.<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0 I didn’t have to go see The Three Stooges.<\/p>\n 2) I didn’t cause a brown out.<\/p>\n 3) I made 153<\/span> 151<\/span> 157<\/span> a lot of bars of soap.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0 I used up all my Pringles cans so now I get to buy and eat some more!<\/p>\n Long live soapmaking!<\/p>\n It was another hot day.\u00a0 Which meant we had to play inside.\u00a0 Again.\u00a0 Although the boys were all up for going to see The Three Stooges at the $3 theatre.\u00a0 Not gonna happen, boys.\u00a0 I can manage a lot of Disney and Pixar.\u00a0 But a remake of The Three Stooges is a flick for The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5255"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5327,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255\/revisions\/5327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>But now I make hot process soap.\u00a0 By heating the ingredients in a crockpot on a low setting, you cause the saponification to happen immediately.\u00a0 “Immediately” actually means over an hour or so when it comes to making soap.\u00a0 It sure beats the heck out of 4 or 6 or 8 weeks, though!\u00a0 I usually use a cheap crockpot that I bought from Goodwill several years ago when making soap.\u00a0 However, I decided this session was going to kill all the hot hours of the day so I pulled my crockpots from everywhere and hauled out extension cords and settled on making 6 crockpots of soap.\u00a0 You might be worried that I was going to damage my good crockpots.\u00a0 But the thing about making soap in a crockpot is that when it’s finished, it’s…..soap!\u00a0 It’s not like trying to scrape out crusted lasagna or burnt chili.\u00a0 Let the soap harden a bit, then run water in it, and it suds up and washes away.\u00a0 The only thing I was worried about was a brown out.\u00a0 How many crockpots should you run when it’s 94 degrees outside and the air conditioning is going full blast?\u00a0 Well, let’s be honest.\u00a0 I wasn’t worried about how many I “should” run.\u00a0 I just wanted to know how many I could get away with before having to reset the breaker.<\/p>\n<\/a>Turns out you can run 7.\u00a0 6 for making soap and 1 for cooking a turkey breast.\u00a0 Let’s face it, you won’t have time to make dinner if you’re making soap all day.\u00a0 So I put a turkey breast in a crockpot, covered it with mayo and french onion soup mix and let it go.\u00a0 I know what you’re thinking:\u00a0 “Are you guys still eating that turkey you butchered 2 years ago?”\u00a0 Yes, we are.\u00a0 Kind of.\u00a0 A friend of ours raised 2 turkeys for the state fair.\u00a0 After the fair we finished them on our farm and then butchered them.\u00a0 The deal was we kept the meat off one turkey and they got the meat off the other.\u00a0 Those birds produced a lot of meat.\u00a0 Each side of the breast weighed in around 4 lbs.\u00a0 And the legs were 5 lbs each.\u00a0 But long after we’d eaten our turkey, my friend called and said they just couldn’t bear to eat their part.\u00a0 You know, since they raised him from a poult and all.\u00a0 So they brought the meat back to us.\u00a0 Don’t you just love civilians?!<\/p>\n<\/a>Most recipes use weight for the all ingredients.\u00a0 But occasionally some soapmaker will put the lye and oils in weight and the water or milk in volume.\u00a0 And a lot of times any additives like oats or herbals will be in a different form of measurement, too.\u00a0 Perhaps they think most people are used to measuring water and milk in a traditional volume measuring cup.\u00a0 Or maybe they don’t want to be hassled by using a scale for every single ingredient in a recipe.\u00a0 Or maybe they just enjoy trying to confuse us crackpot soapmakers so we mess up the measurements, never get our soap to come to trace or have any real exfoliating effect, and are forced to buy their homemade soap for $4.25 a bar at craft fairs.\u00a0 Remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean other soapmakers aren’t conspiring against you.<\/p>\n<\/a>With my ingredients weighed, it was just a matter of getting the lye and oils to the right temperature.\u00a0 I melted my oils together in a crockpot if they were already partially dissolved and melted them in the microwave if they were still pretty solid.\u00a0 Basically, I just wanted the oils to be completely melted before I started adding the lye mixture.<\/p>\n<\/a>Once I had the mixtures safely combined, it was time to blend until trace.\u00a0 Trace is hard to explain so I included a pic of it.\u00a0 Well, kind of.\u00a0 If you zoom in on this picture you might be able to see that the mixture is at trace.\u00a0 Essentially, it means that if you let a trail of the soap mixture dribble onto the top of the batch it will stay there, visible, for a while before being absorbed back into the mixture.\u00a0 I would have taken better pictures of our soap at trace, but I was making 6 batches of soap.\u00a0 Simultaneously.\u00a0 So a lot of times Big was in charge of blending to trace while I was making lye mixtures or putting additives in soap mixtures that were already done.\u00a0 I don’t want to say that I bit off more than I could chew, but I will admit that photo opportunities were limited.\u00a0 And there might have been some cussing.\u00a0 Or freaking out.\u00a0 Just a few short bursts.<\/p>\n<\/a>Once a soap batch reached trace, it was heated on low in the crockpot until it kind of curled over at the outside edges.\u00a0 This could take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour or an hour and a half.\u00a0 Or longer depending on the recipe.\u00a0 When the curled edges appeared,\u00a0 I stirred it all together and then kept an eye on it until it looked kind of thick and waxy.\u00a0 At that point I needed to know if the saponfication process\u00a0 (the conversion of the oils and\/or fats into a soap by combining them with an alkali, in this case, lye) was done or if the lye was still caustic.\u00a0 Apparently you can use a pH strip to test soap in the crockpot and see if the process is completed.\u00a0 A pH of 7 is considered neutral.\u00a0 But it was just as easy to stir the batch, let the spoon cool on the counter for a minute, and then chip a piece of dried soap off the spoon.\u00a0 I washed my hands with the soap chip and if it stung at all, then I knew it needed more time.\u00a0 I’ve never burned my hands doing this, but it has on occasion given me a good, strong tingling until it washed off.\u00a0 You might consider that lazier than buying a container of pH strips.\u00a0 I prefer to call it an “authentic” way to test homemade soap.\u00a0 You don’t think they had pH strips in pioneer days, do ya?\u00a0 Also, if I bought one more product that could be used in meth manufacture I’d probably have satellites aimed at my house.<\/p>\n<\/a>Once at the waxy stage, I had to stir in any additives (oats, corn meal, honey, essential oils, herbs, etc) quickly and then get it into the molds before it got too hard to scoop out.\u00a0 Pringles cans are my favorite molds.\u00a0 They make perfect round soaps.\u00a0 They are easy to peel off the soap once it hardens.\u00a0 Plus, you get to eat the Pringles first. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 But I’ll use almost any container that is cylinder shaped and easy to get the soap out of.\u00a0 Except for a Parmesan cheese container.\u00a0 I will never use a Parmesan cheese container ever again.\u00a0 I thought the cheese container was a nice cylinder.\u00a0 Too bad the soap wouldn’t come out when it hardened.\u00a0 So I peeled off the label to try and cut away the plastic and I was shocked and appalled.\u00a0 Shocked because the container looked like this from the outside:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Good thing all the other soaps came out OK.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, by the time I was done, I had 153 soaps.\u00a0 Or, according to Little, 151 soaps.\u00a0 Or, according to Big, 157 soaps.\u00a0 Apparently soap is harder to count than it is to make.\u00a0 Go figure.\u00a0 Anyway, the most important things about today’s activity are that:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"